Veikkaus Now Requires Identification in All Digital and Physical Channel Games
The first day of 2024 is a historic moment in Finnish gambling, when all Veikkaus gambling games require identification.
A lottery ticket that requires identification can be identified by the Veikkaus card image on the front of the lottery ticket.
FINLAND (January 1, 2024) — At the turn of the year, familiar scratch cards, such as the Ässä and Casino cards, entered the scope of identification as the last product group.
“As of the beginning of this year, Veikkaus Oy is the first game company in the world that requires identification in all digital and physical channel games,” says Susanna Saikkonen, Veikkaus’ director of responsibility .
The identification is based on the Lotteries Act that entered into force in 2021. Identification is aimed at preventing gaming disadvantages, facilitating age limit monitoring and building a safer gaming environment. Identification also makes it possible to effectively identify risky gambling based on the data and intervene.
“When the customer can play only with identification, it is possible for him to track his total playing from the game history. At the turn of the year, scratch cards also came under the annual loss limit and game suspensions,” Saikkonen continues.
The Christmas sale of lottery tickets is in line with expectations
When buying scratch cards, you can identify yourself in the same way as you already know from coupon games, i.e. with a Veikkaus card, a driving, personal, Kela card or a mobile card found in the Veikkaus application.
At the time of claim, the original scratch card against which the winnings are paid is still required. Lottery winnings are therefore not paid directly to the customer’s game or bank account, as in coupon games, despite identification. Lottery winnings are revealed only when you scratch, and for redemption you need the identification information of the lottery, which is entered into the sales terminal when the lottery is checked. You can claim your winnings and participate in the additional draw at any Veikkaus game sales point.
“The change is certainly big for our lottery players, but identification is already quite familiar to players from the coupon games side,” says Ville Venojärvi, head of lottery games at Veikkaus.
Raffles have been popular gifts, especially at Christmas.
“The raffle sale last Christmas was quite in line with expectations. Even though lotteries purchased in 2023 can be redeemed without identification until the end of 2024, there was no evidence that lotteries were purchased for storage. This also shows that identification is a familiar method of operation for our players and we expect this to go well with lottery sales as well,” Venojärvi continues.
At the beginning of the year, a renewed supplementary lottery became available for scratch cards. The buyer of an identified ticket can take part in an additional draw at any point of sale with their ticket, where there is no profit. In the supplementary drawing, five prizes of one thousand euros are drawn daily.
SOURCE: Veikkaus.
